From The Enlightenment To The Practice:the Dissemination Of The Wealth Of Nations In Britain Before 1823

Known as a famous text in the economical ideal history, the wealth of nations have been thought to be important widely. People have been not clear about the effect of the wealth of nations on practice, especially on British economic and social development, and the process in which the ideal have been practiced. Based on that, the thesis try to expore the dissemination of the wealth of nations in 1776-1823 Britain to make clear the process from ideal to practice and the element restricting the process.First of all, the dissemination of the wealth of nations had been realized by the text of the wealth of nations, and the process related with the steps, which including publicating, revising, editing, issueing and circulating. From 1776 to 1823, many different editions of the wealth of nations had appear in Britain, which was not only drived by development of conmercial society, but also did publishers and author affect the circulating of the wealth of nations initiatively.Based on the dissimination of texts of the wealth of nations, readers begun to read the wealth of nations directly. Because of limit of development of economy and society, its readers centred on middle and upper class of british society, but readers became more and more, as economy develop fast in the period. In the process of reading, readers which owe different knowledge structure and political ecolomical viewpoint have different understanding on the wealth of nations. At the same time, as backgrund of time had gone to change, readers in different time had different opinion on the wealth of nations.Moreover, besides the text of the wealth of nations, thought of the wealth of nations had spread in the Britain. In the period, intellect who believed in economical liberalism not only had read the wealth of nations deeply, but also propagated and discussed it in the public sphere, which also promoted dissemination of the wealth of nations in some way. In the field of the ecolomic and politic, thought of the wealth of nations also had bugun to spread out, then gradually affected the development of economy in practice.In a word, the wealth of nations had been gradually transformed into practice in the process of dissemination, and British economic, society, culture all had been affected more or less. At the same time, the process had also been restrained by the society.